<p>Here's Yudof's letter:</p>
<p>An</a> Open Letter to California | Facebook</p>
<p>As a parently of senior that is/was seriously considering a UC for next year, this does give pause. What do you think? If a student has a good private option, is it foolhardy to stay in CA at a UC?</p>
<p>It is different this year, because the UCs have been "protected" somewhat from the previous budget slashings. Gov Brown may not be protecting the UCs any longer...</p>
<p>It was my understanding that the UC’s have been getting slashed regularly since the economy imploded. It is also my understanding that their 5 and 6yr (typical) graduation rates have been falling because of it as well.</p>
<p>I don’t think 5 and 6 year graduation rates are very common. It seems to be very popular for people on CC to post about, but there are no solid numbers to back it up. The budget crisis has been going on for a while and yet the majority of students are graduating in 4 years.</p>
<p>One solution would be for the UC’s to admit less students (hard times=hard decisions). Room could be made for these students at the CSU’s by eliminating most remedial courses and thus forcing students who are unprepared for college level courses to attend community colleges (or gasp–work harder in high school).</p>
<p>Funny–when Jerry Brown was running for governor he said, “We will protect the UC’s”. Hmm… I guess Jerry had a reality check about the budget</p>
<p>Just to be clear - this is a proposed slashed budget.</p>
<p>
That’s not typical - 4 years is typical and borne out by the stats. I posted some on another thread within the last couple of weeks when someone mentioned the 5-6 year statement. Almost everyone who has direct recent experience with the UCs posting here has indicated a number closer closer to 4 years rather than 5-6. </p>
<p>There have been budget cuts for a while now. The important point is the effect on the students which isn’t always so easy to determine except for fee increases.</p>
<p>
Yeah but now he’s been in office a…week.</p>
<p>The UC’s, particularly Berkeley and UCLA need to rapidly transition to a private university mentality. There are better development offices in private grammar schools. Their desire to admit more out of staters is indicative of this short term mentality. They should be developing a loyal donor base, which of course means they would need to start to give some degree of preference to alumni children.</p>
<p>Whether 5 or 6 years is now the norm, prospective students and parents would be foolish to not plan on 5 years given all the financial problems.</p>
<p>When I lived in California Prop 13 had a ceiling on Property tax, 1.5%, is this still in effect? And if it is, should it be?</p>
<p>Yes, Prop 13 is often called the “third rail” of California politics and is the source of many problems, IMHO. Jerry may have to go after it. I hope he does.</p>
<p>Taxation is NOT the answer. Privatization is. Government is not efficient and is well known to be very inept at running most anything.</p>
<p>Many are suggesting that this proposed slashed budget is the hammer JB is holding over the state. With smashing pain impending, it is thought tax-payers will finally have to allow increased taxes. (JB promised he would not increase taxes…unless the voters wanted it). So these threats may be a bit of heavy politicking. Fun, huh?</p>
<p>It’s a complete shame. My S2 is applying to UCs as well as privates. Now we have to wonder if these great schools will last another 4 (or 5 or 6…) years intact?</p>
<p>Maybe the UC will stop raiding other schools with high offers and little classroom activity. UC still is well funded. They still will end up spending as much money as last year if not more.</p>
<p>I also will be interested to see how this plays out, since I have a hs 2012 kid. My older d chose a private; we were lucky that with fin aid, her costs are now lower than they would have been at Cal or UCLA. I don’t know how much more they can cut and still keep the quality of the top-notch schools. I think our kids will be ok, next 4 - 5 years, but if this is a beginning of a decline, that would be very sad not just for the state, but for the country, given the international reputation of the top UCs.</p>
<p>Also, check out the following from the LA times [Los</a> Angeles Times: California budget balancer - latimes.com](<a href=“http://www.latimes.com/news/local/budget/]Los”>California)</p>
<p>It allows you to set the cuts you would make or the fees that you would increase, and decreases the budget deficit accordingly. The current deficit is about one third of the entire general fund, meaning one could cut ALL the funding to UCs, the Cal States, and the community colleges, and there would still be a sizable deficit. Many other services could be cut entirely, for instance all state park funding, still a huge deficit would remain. </p>
<p>The state can no longer borrow money, and the public does not want taxes or fees raised. Current revenue is insufficient, given the recession with unemployment above the national average in the state as well as underemployment, delimiting the income tax base which is 50% of the revenue. (From a SF Chron article). </p>
<p>So, this is what we are left with. I do hope that there is some long-term thinking (and I agree with the poster who stated that the UCs need to look at long-term alumni allegiance and fundraising, as do the private colleges), because the UCs have been crown-jewels among the public universities in this country.</p>
<p>The UCs ought to go need-aware for awhile. I know it goes against their mission, but I also know that there are plenty of full-pay top-performing (but not tippy-top) students who were shut out of UCLA and Cal. I am thinking specifically of one from our h.s. who is now paying full tuition at Georgetown. I can’t imagine that the quality of the education would suffer much if they did this. The UCs are so much more difficult to get into now than they were back in our generation; many of my UCLA-alumn friends are shocked when they discover that their kid who performed significantly better than they did in h.s. cannot get in to UCLA now.</p>
<p>Last I looked, UC 4 year graduation rates were very low at all but the top 3. Under 40% is what I recall.</p>
<p>I would definitely seek a private option if affordable. I worry about this country. We are declining and not making the right hard choices. If we don’t educate this generation, the decline will be permanent.</p>
<p>The problem with attending the UCs is that you really can’t plan on how big the increase is going to be from year to year. With the privates, it’s been about 5% per year. Of course, UC is working off of a smaller tuition base. But if you would be really stretching to send your kid to a UC now, then a 20 or 30% increase would be a deal breaker. If you can get merit aid at a private, you might be well served.</p>
<p>I wonder how the UC system stacks up against private, non-profit institutions. From my admittedly uninformed position I question:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>It seems like there are a lot of very high paid staffers at UC. Not just the executive, but the executives secretary and support staff. Are there any comparisons of executive compensation and number of executives and staff as compared to non-public schools?</p></li>
<li><p>Does 4 year graduation rate include students who transfer from community colleges? Is the time spent in the community colleges included in the 4 year calculation?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>These organizations seem so top heavy, yet when money tightens it goes straight to the students. I remeber when prop 13 passed (my first election eligible to vote). The first impact was to close libraries rather than to address over staffing and waste.</p>
<p>Okay - I’ll post this stat again since it’s come up in this thread. The stats are in the Common Data Set and are easy to find for anyone wondering what the actual 4 year graduation rate at a particular UC (or almost any college) is as opposed to guessing or basing it on an anecdote of someone’s cousin from 20 years ago -</p>
<ul>
<li>At UCLA
– Number of first time bachelors degree seeking students - 4269
– Number of those students who completed the degree in 4 years or less - 2867</li>
<li>This makes for a 4 year or less grad rate of 67%
– Number who took longer than 4 years but 5 or less years - 882</li>
<li>This makes for a 5 year or less grad rate of 88%</li>
</ul>
<p>Or you could look at my own math fwiw that allows for those who basically will either never get their degree or have some other reason to take an inordinate amount of time to complete it (> 6 years) that has nothing to do with the college - i.e. it’s their own management of it. Using this formula, the total number who complete the degree in 6 years or less is 3810 so given the 4 or less number of 2867 that’s a 75% rate of students who grad in 4 years or less of the group who won’t take longer than 6 years to graduate. I think it’s a viable stat although not one everyone thinks of.</p>
<p>[UCLA</a> Office of Analysis and Information Management | AIM](<a href=“http://www.aim.ucla.edu/CDS/cds0910.asp]UCLA”>http://www.aim.ucla.edu/CDS/cds0910.asp)</p>
<p>At the same time people need to understand that the ‘typical’ public student may not be identical to the ‘typical’ private student in a few other ways -
<p>I just picked UCLA because of some familiarity with it. If you’re interested in the stats for a different UC or anywhere else just go to their website and search for ‘common data set’ and you can usually find the actual stats pretty quickly.</p>
<p>This is important info to many people who are contemplating whether to attend a UC or a different college and are using the grad rate (and subsequent cost) as a factor. It’s important to get accurate info and not go based on opinions from uninformed people, outdated info, or purely anecdotal info.</p>
<p>I think you will still see many top students picking UCLA and Berkeley if they are full pay but can’t afford 50,000. The schools that are going to give good merit aid to those students are not going to be at the same level. I see it with the friends of my kids. One example- Berkeley with no need based aid, Lewis and Clark and American with great merit aid, Pomona and Amherst at full pay. The kid ended up at Berkeley.
For the kid getting into UCSB or Davis or Santa Cruz and having merit aid offers it is more up in the air.</p>
<p>
And in many cases will make those selections even if they can afford 50K elsewhere. The quality of the education or what the individual seeks in an education isn’t directly proportional to the tuition cost. There are lots of reasons why people choose their schools and while cost is a significant factor it’s by no means the only one. For example, there are a lot of top students in California who don’t even bother to apply to the ivies whether they can afford them or not, whether they’re a reasonable contender or not for the simple reason that they don’t want to move back east to attend college.</p>
<p>It’s true that in some cases, a private college with aid/merit $, can be less than a UC. However, few private colleges have the international renown of a Cal or UCLA. In many fields, that renown offers a significant advantage when applying for jobs or graduate school.</p>